ejbo
Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and
Organization Studies
Vol. 10, No. 1
Editorial information page 3
Robert I. Bell, Hershey H. Friedman, Linda Weiser Friedman
Conflict of Interest: The Common Thread Underlying Ethical Lapses
page 4
Julian Friedland
The Utility of Offshoring: A Rawlsian Critique page 9
Venkat R. Krishnan
Leader-Member Exchange, Transformational Leadership, and Value System
page 14
Ana Akemi Ikeda, Tânia Modesto Veludo-de-Oliveira, Marcos Cortez Campomar
Organizational Conflicts Perceived by Marketing Executives
page 22
Geetanee Napal
An assessment of power abuse under ethics philosophies page 29
Larry A. Pace and Mary M. Livingston
Protecting Human Subjects in Internet Research page 35
Christian T. K.-H. Stadtländer
Book Review: Values-Based Leadership: A Revolutionary Approach to Business Success and Personal Prosperity page 42
In this issue:
Vol. 10, No. 1 (2005) ISSN 1239-2685 Publisher:
Business and Organization Ethics Network (BON)
Publishing date:
2005-5-8 http://ejbo.jyu.fi/
Postal address University of Jyväskylä School of Business and Economics Business and Organization Ethics Network (BON)
P.O. Box 35 FIN-40351 Jyväskylä FINLAND
Iiris Aaltio Professor
Dept. of Business Administration Lappeenranta University of Technology Lappeenranta, Finland
Johannes Brinkmann Professor
BI Norwegian School of Management Oslo, Norway
Zoe S. Dimitriades Associate Professor
Business Administration Department University of Macedonia
Thessaloniki, Greece John Dobson Professor College of Business
California Polytechnic State University San Luis Opisbo, U.S.A.
Claes Gustafsson Professor
Dept. of Industrial Economics and Management
Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, Sweden Kari Heimonen Professor
School of Business and Economics University of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä, Finland
EJBO - Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies Editors
Editor in Chief:
Professor Tuomo Takala University of Jyväskylä tatakala@econ.jyu.fi Editor:
Professor Anna-Maija Lämsä University of Jyväskylä lamsa@econ.jyu.fi Technical editor:
Ms Hilkka Grahn hilkka.grahn.hti@jypoly.fi
Editorial board
Pertti Kettunen Professor
School of Business and Economics University of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä, Finland Venkat R. Krishnan Professor
Xavier Labour Relations Institute Jamshedpur, India
Janina Kubka Dr.Sc.
Management and Economics Faculty/Department of Philosophy Gdansk University of Technology Gdansk, Poland
Anna Putnova Dr., PhD., MBA School of Management Brno University of Technology Brno, Czech Republic Outi Uusitalo Professor
School of Business and Economics University of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä, Finland Bert van de Ven Ph.D. (Phil), MBA Faculty of Philosophy Tilburg University Tilburg, The Netherlands
Editorial information
Copyright
Authors submitting articles for publi- cation warrant that the work is not an in- fringement of any existing copyright and will indemnify the publisher against any breach of such warranty. For ease of dis- semination and to ensure proper policing of use, papers become the legal copyright of the publisher unless otherwise agreed.
Submissions
Submissions should be sent as an email attachment and as RTF format to:
Editor
Professor Anna-Maija Lämsä University of Jyväskylä
School of Business and Economics Finland
email: lamsa@econ.jyu.fi
Editorial objectives
Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies EJBO aims to provide an avenue for the presentation and discussion of topics related to ethi- cal issues in business and organizations worldwide. The journal publishes articles of empirical research as well as theoreti- cal and philosophical discussion. Innova- tive papers and practical applications to enhance the field of business ethics are welcome. The journal aims to provide an international web-based communication medium for all those working in the field of business ethics whether from academic institutions, industry or consulting.
The important aim of the journal is to provide an international medium which is available free of charge for readers. The journal is supported by Business and
Ethics Network BON, which is an offi- cially registered non-profit organization in Finland.
Reviewing process
Each paper is reviewed by the Edi- tor in Chief and, if it is judged suitable for publication, it is then sent to at least one referee for blind review. Based on the recommendations, the Editor in Chief decides whether the paper should be ac- cepted as is, revised or rejected.
Manuscript requirements
The manuscript should be submitted in double line spacing with wide margins as an email attachment to the editor. The text should not involve any particular for- mulations. All authors should be shown and author's details must be printed on a first sheet and the author should not be identified anywhere else in the article.
The manuscript will be considered to be a definitive version of the article. The au- thor must ensure that it is grammatically correct, complete and without spelling or typographical errors.
As a guide, articles should be between 2000 and 6000 words in length. A title of not more than eight words should be provided. A brief autobiographical note should be supplied including full name, affiliation, e-mail address and full inter- national contact details as well as a short description of previous achievements.
Authors must supply an abstract which should be limited to 200 words in to- tal. In addition, maximum six keywords which encapsulate the principal topics of the paper should be included.
Notes or Endnotes should be not be used. Figures, charts and diagrams should be kept to a minimum. They must be black and white with minimum shad-
ing and numbered consecutively using arabic numerals. They must be refereed explicitly in the text using numbers.
References to other publications should be complete and in Harvard style.
They should contain full bibliographical details and journal titles should not be abbreviated. References should be shown within the text by giving the author's last name followed by a comma and year of publication all in round brackets, e.g.
( Jones, 2004). At the end of the article should be a reference list in alphabetical order as follows
(a) for books
surname, initials and year of publi- cation, title, publisher, place of publica- tion, e.g. Lozano, J. (2000), Ethics and Organizations. Understanding Business Ethics as a Learning Process, Kluwer, Dordrecht.
(b) for chapter in edited book
surname, initials and year, “title", edi- tor's surname, initials, title, publisher, place, pages, e.g. Burt, R.S. and Knez, M.
(1996), "Trust and Third-Party Gossip", in Kramer, R.M. and Tyler, T.R. (Eds.), Trust in Organizations. Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, pp. 68-89.
(c) for articles
surname, initials, year "title", journal, volume, number, pages, e.g. Nielsen, R.P.
(1993) "Varieties of postmodernism as moments in ethics action-learning", Busi- ness Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp.
725-33.
Electronic sources should include the URL of the electronic site at which they may be found, as follows:
Pace, L.A. (1999), "The Ethical Impli- cations of Quality", Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies EJBO, Vol. 4 No. 1. Available http://ejbo.
jyu.fi/index.cgi?page=articles/0401_2
Conflict of Interest: The Common Thread Underlying Ethical Lapses
By: Robert I. Bell
RIBELL@VOILA.FR
Hershey H. Friedman
X.FRIEDMAN@ATT.NET
Linda Weiser Friedman
LINDA_FRIEDMAN@BARUCH.CUNY.EDU
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine various industries for examples of conflicts of interest, and the resulting harmful ethical and managerial effects. All of these examples are well known, having appeared in various news sources.
However, each incident has been viewed as an isolated case with no common lessons to be learned. The authors posit that, were it not for the presence of conflict of interest, these abuses might never have oc- curred.
Even the most ethical of people might succumb to temptation when the potential gains are large. It may be impossible to eliminate all conflicts of interest but reducing them will certainly enhance the chance that people will do what is right. Organizations that are truly concerned about ethics must first ensure that there are few conflicts of interest present. Of course, the same may be said about textbooks discussing ethics; first explain the concept of conflict of interest and show how it often produces unethi- cal behavior and then talk about ethics.
Conflicts of interest
Conflicts of interest have caused a great number of problems in numer- ous areas and have been responsible for financial harm and injury to millions of innocent people. The following are just a small sample of some of the conflicts of interest that have helped undermine the public’s faith and confidence in numerous institutions ranging from the securities industry to Congress. Attempts are be- ing made now to curb some of the abuses that we are noting.
In the Boardroom
The compensation of CEOs should ideally be determined by a compensa- tion committee consisting entirely of in- dependent directors. This has not been the case in many firms and members of compensation committees have often had ties to the CEO (Henriques and Fabri- kant, 2002). To make matters worse, the CEO was often involved in determining the compensation of board members, some of whom were on the compensation committee. Needless to say, this conflict of interest resulted in astronomical com- pensations for CEOs. In fact, whereas in 1973, the average compensation of a CEO in the United States was about 45 times more than the salary of the low- est paid employee; today, this ratio has skyrocketed to 500:1. In Europe, where management is just as effective, the ratio is 40:1 (Axtman and Scherer, 2002).
In Accounting Firms
The Enron/Arthur Andersen case demonstrated what can happen when an accounting firm earns fees for both con- sulting and auditing. Indeed, in many cases that have resulted in financial scan- dals, accounting firms such as Arthur An- dersen earned considerably more money from consulting fees than from audits. It is difficult for auditors to be objective if this means that their firm will lose mil- lions of dollars in consulting fees. Mills (2003: pp. 81-90) notes “CEOs found their accountants to be allies in the at-
tempt to exaggerate companies’ financial performance.” One key reason had to do with the fact that accounting firms were making a considerable amount of money from consulting. From 1977 to 2002 the auditing profession policed itself by the use of a “peer review” system. Needless to say, this system did not work. It did not result in even one negative report in the 25 years of its existence.
In Investment Banking Firms There is a potentially severe conflict of interest when a securities firm is in- volved in both investment banking and research. The investment banking divi- sion would be quite upset if the research analysts were to advise clients not to pur- chase securities they were trying to sell.
Mills (2003, p. 267) notes, “CEOs award lucrative investment banking contracts to banks in return, in part, for investment bankers influencing analysts to make fa- vorable recommendations to investors on behalf of the CEO’s companies.” In fact, three major banks were concerned about the financial soundness of WorldCom in 2001 but had no problem recommend- ing that their clients purchase $12 billion worth of WorldCom bonds (Morgenson, 2004). One of them, Citigroup, settled with investors and agreed to pay $2.65 billion to investors. This is the second largest settlement ever in a securities class action. What has emerged from this case is that Jack Grubman, the Citigroup analyst, was recommending the stock of Worldcom and other firms despite the fact that his firm had a very profitable investment banking relationship with them. Moreover, as if this were not bad enough, Grubman was very close to Ber- nard Ebbers, the CEO of Worldcom.
These conflicts of interest were re- sponsible for the loss of trillions of dol- lars of market capitalization, a loss borne mainly by investors and pension funds.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has at- tempted to reduce or eliminate several of the above-mentioned conflicts of in- terest. This law requires that the CEO and CFO sign off on the firm’s financial statements. In addition, an accounting oversight board was established to set au-
diting standards and keep watch over the accounting industry.
A summary of the Act may be found at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants website (AICPA, 2003).
It should be noted that the conflict of interest problem that occurs when a securities analyst works for a firm involved in un- derwriting initial public offerings (IPO) has been written about in academic journals (Dugar and Nathan, 1995; Rajan and Ser- vaes, 1997; Michaely and Womack, 1999). The academic re- search indicates that security analysts who work for the under- writing firm are significantly more optimistic in their forecasted earnings for the IPO than analysts that have no connection to the company.
At the New York Stock Exchange
Richard A. Grasso, as chairman of the New York Stock Ex- change (NYSE), in effect wore two hats: He was supposed to protect investors in his role as regulator but he also worked for the members of the NYSE. In fact, it was the members of the NYSE that paid Grasso the huge compensation package that ultimately forced him to resign.
In the Mutual-Fund Industry
The Investment Company Institute (ICI), the trade asso- ciation consisting of several hundred major mutual funds, was successful in convincing Congress that it speaks for millions of shareholders and protects their interests. The reality was that the ICI also represented the companies that run the mutual funds. Some of the practices investigated in 2003 were late trading and market timing, practices that are beneficial to cer- tain investors at the expense of everyone else. A new conflict of interest has come to light and is now being investigated by the S.E.C. It involves “pay-to-play,” i.e., payments made by mutual fund companies to ensure that their funds are included in cor- porate 401(k) plans and retirement plans overseen by firms. It is now clear after the mutual-fund scandal, that the loyalty of the ICI was mainly with the companies, not the shareholders (Dwyer, 2003).
In the Insurance Industry
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is suing Marsh &
McLennan, the largest insurance broker in the world over their alleged collusion with the insurance companies in bilking clients.
Marsh & McLennan has been accused of bid-rigging and price fixing. Phony, artificially-high quotes, referred to as “throwaway quotes,” “protective quotes,” backup quotes,” or “B quotes,” were used to give the appearance of competitive bidding and custom- ers were deceived into believing that they were getting good deals (Vickers, 2004). It is becoming apparent that the fraud and deceit was caused to a large degree by the conflicts of inter- est that arose because insurance brokers receive fees from clients and commissions from the insurers (Berenson, 2004).
In the Political System
The entire political system is replete with conflicts of inter- est. Special interest groups contribute to politicians and they in turn vote in a manner that helps these groups. It is apparent
that a key purpose for many campaign contributions is to influ- ence the way legislators will vote. There have been complaints that major contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel have spent huge sums of money on political influence and in turn allegedly been repaid with lucrative government contracts. In- deed, many politicians have received contributions from these firms and have allegedly repaid them with lucrative govern- ment contracts. However, it is not only corporations that seek to influence legislation by contributing to politicians and po- litical parties. Organizations ranging from labor unions to the NRA to the AMA have contributed huge sums of money to politicians and political parties in order to influence the political process. Common Cause has a website that attempts to make the public aware of the numerous benefits provided to corporate special interests, i.e., corporate welfare (Common Cause, 2002).
The purpose of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act law is to limit the influence of the wealthy special interest groups in the political process.
The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee is Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. Since he has become chairman of the committee, federal spending per capita in Alaska is the highest in the nation (Rosenbaum, 2004). Approximately 4% of the overall spending in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005 is for what is referred to as “earmarks,” i.e., for pork bar- rel projects. In fact, Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, claims that there are 11,772 pork projects in the Appro- priations Act (Rosenbaum, 2004).
As Krugman (2004) points out, the head of the Environ- mental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation previ- ously worked for the industries involved in much of the pollut- ing of the environment. These firms are among the very large donors to politicians and political parties. Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse has resulted in the easing of many re- strictions, especially with regard to dangerous pollutants such as mercury. Krugman notes that 8% of American women have excessive amounts of mercury in their bloodstreams; this can be very harmful to fetuses.
Gerrymandering has made a mockery of the democratic process. Election district boundaries are redrawn in a way that gives one party an advantage. This is accomplished by drawing the boundaries in such a way that the opposition is in as few districts as possible. This explains why re-election rates are so high. Redistricting provides an unfair advantage in elections to the political party that draws the districts; it is a tool used to ensure that incumbents have little chance of losing an election.
According to Drum (2004), “Computer optimized gerryman- dering has taken us to the point where no more than about 5%
of House seats are seriously competitive in each election. The rest are mere shams, not much more real than elections in Iran or the old Soviet Union.” The cause of the problem is the con- flict of interest that arises when election districts are drawn by legislators rather than independent bodies.
In the Pentagon
There have been complaints that individuals working for the Pentagon in the purchasing of weapons and other products from companies are later offered jobs from these same firms. A recent case involved an officer at Boeing who openly “discussed”
a job opening with a Pentagon weapons purchaser (Holmes, 2003). Recently, Senator John McCain tried to have E.C. "Pete"
Aldridge – formerly a weapons purchaser for the Pentagon and currently a member of the board of directors of Lockheed Mar-
tin, a major defense contractor – removed from a committee set up by the president to advise NASA on the best approach to explore space. McCain felt that the conflict of interest was too strong.
In Medical Journals
There are a number of conflicts of interest in the medical scholarship that have recently come to light. Nature Neuro- science, a major medical journal, announced that henceforth, authors of articles evaluating products would have to indicate whether they had any financial ties to companies making these products. There was a case in which the author of a review ar- ticle describing “promising” new therapies for depression stood to gain financially (he owned shares in the company associated with one of the therapies and was a board member with stock options of another company whose product had been promot- ed by him) from the adoption of these treatments (Petersen, 2003).
In Medicine
Several years ago, Consumer Reports did a study on needless surgery (Consumer Reports on Health, 1998). One finding was that for some procedures the percentage of operations that were unwarranted was more than 50%! The problem of unnecessary surgery may very well be due to the conflict of interest a surgeon has when a patient is examined. Clearly, a surgeon stands to make considerably more money by recommending surgery than by informing the patient that surgery is not necessary. This is the reason that many HMOs require a second opinion before allowing surgery. Another conflict of interest may be present when doctors prescribe medication. If a doctor tells a patient to wait until the problem gets better on its own (which will hap- pen in many cases), they make very little. If they prescribe drugs and/or send the patient to take expensive tests, they can have the patient return to discuss the results. With some prescrip- tion drugs, the doctor has to monitor the patient, which means additional visits. Another problem that should be noted is that the pharmaceutical companies often pay doctors for recruiting patients for drug trials. Some doctors have been able to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in recruitment fees.
In the Pharmaceutical Industry
Pharmaceutical companies fund virtually all the research be- ing done testing the efficacy of new drugs. The high price for a new drug ends when the patent expires, typically after 17 to 21 years. Since the drug companies make considerably more profit from new drugs than from older drugs, there is a serious con- flict of interest. Pharmaceutical firms are mainly interested in funding studies that demonstrate that a new, patentable drug is effective. New drugs tend to be tested against placebos rather than existing drugs . This is done because a new drug is more likely to “beat” a placebo than an existing drug (Angell, 2004).
An even more serious problem is that “according to a 1996 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, an amazing 98%
of company-sponsored drug studies published between 1980 and 1989 in peer-reviewed journals or in symposia proceedings favored the funding company’s drug” (Bodenheimer and Col- lins, undated). Bodenheimer and Collins feel that this is due
to the conflict of interest that arises because the pharmaceuti- cal companies fund the research that determines whether their drug is efficacious.
Topol (2004), in describing the decision by Merck to remove the arthritis drug Vioxx, after three years of denying that it could cause heart attacks, makes the following remark: “…despite studies showing the magnitude of the public health problem, for several years Merck did nothing to investigate. This surely represents a conflict between the interests of the public and the interests of a company with a blockbuster drug that had sales of $2.5 billion in 2003.” Topol notes that the FDA should have forced Merck to conduct a study in order to determine whether or not Vioxx could cause heart attacks, but instead did nothing.
The truth came out accidentally because Merck was conduct- ing a study hoping to show that Vioxx could help patients with colon polyps.
Null et al. (2003) claim that the number of iatrogenic deaths in the United States is 783,936. They assert that many of the problems in the medical field are due to conflicts of interest.
Null et al. cite the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell, who has been demanding in- creased restrictions on financial incentives for medical research- ers. Angell feels that growing conflicts of interest are tainting science.
Tyrone B. Hayes, a Berkeley researcher claimed that the pes- ticide manufacturer that sponsored his research tried to sup- press it when it was demonstrating that its product had adverse effects on the sexual development of frogs. It turned out that the company sponsoring the research did have the final say as to whether the research could be published. Later on, the com- pany tried to bribe Professor Hayes with a $2 million lab if he would continue doing his research in a “private setting,” i.e., keep quiet about it (Blumenstyk, 2003).
Parkinson (2004) asserts that “when a single vested interest, for example a corporation, funds a research study on an area of relevance to them, that study is much more likely to yield results which favour the vested interest.” Parkinson also notes the problem that results in scientific research because negative results tend to be suppressed. Null et al (2003) also believe this to be the case and cite many sources supporting this view.
In Psychology
Goode (2004) discusses the conflict between the American Psychological Association (155,000 members) and the Ameri- can Psychological Society (15,000 members). The latter or- ganization was formed by researchers who broke off from the American Psychological Association because they felt that it was not scientific enough. A number of researchers, for exam- ple, feel that there is little evidence supporting the validity of the Rorschach inkblot test or the existence of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. They have been critical of various new untested therapies and labels such as sexual addiction and codependency. Each side has claimed that the other has finan- cial interest in defending its point of view. It would appear that an impartial organization is needed to determine whether un- tested forms of psychotherapy are effective.
It has been noted – specifically in a Congressional hearing regarding Insurance coverage of mental health benefits – that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association, a catalog of mental diag- noses, contains a built-in conflict of interest: The individuals who determine the disorders to be included in the manual are
the ones who profit from it, since the DSM manual is used to provide diagnoses to insurance companies for reimbursement.
In the Food and Drug Administration
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is mandated by law to use independent experts to determine which medica- tions should be approved, what information should be stated on warning labels, and in deciding how drug studies should be conducted. These experts are not supposed to have a financial stake in the drugs they are asked to evaluate. Amazingly, a study conducted by USA TODAY found that more than half of the experts used by the FDA have a financial relationship with the drug company whose drug they are asked to evaluate (Cauchon, 2000).
In high school guidance counseling. Winter (2004) de- scribes how guidance counselors, who are supposed to be objec- tive sources of information for high school students, are being wooed by colleges. These lavish perks may include skiing trips, vacations, golfing trips, going to the racetrack, luxurious rooms, fancy meals, tickets to sporting events and/or spending time at a spa, all with the hope that the counselor will recommend a particular college to students. It becomes very difficult to be im- partial and provide reliable information when one has received numerous inducements that might even include a vacation for one’s entire family.
In the Publishing Industry
College textbooks should be revised only when the informa- tion in an existing text is outdated. This decision should not be made by publishers who make little money from a textbook that has been around for a few years since students purchase used copies of the textbook. It is in the publishers (and authors) interest to revise a textbook as frequently as possible in order to maximize profits. In many cases, the major change in a new edition of a text is in the arrangement of chapters rather than in the addition of new material.
Voting Machine Testing
According to a New York Times editorial (2004) the fed- eral labs that have the responsibility of ensuring that voting machines are reliable are for-profit companies that are selected and paid for by the firms that manufacture the voting machines.
This is an obvious conflict of interest. What is interesting is that the same cannot be said of the lab that certifies gambling equipment. The Nevada Gaming Control Board lab is a state
agency so there is no conflict of interest here. There have been problems with voting machines that miscount and voting soft- ware that contains “back doors” that make it possible for elec- tions to be stolen. Black Box Voting is a consumer protection organization for voting (see www.blackboxvoting.org).
Testing of Tasers
Police departments throughout the United States are using Tasers, a gun that fires barbs that deliver electric shocks, to sub- due suspects. According to Berenson (2004), the number of people who have died from Tasers is at least 50. It is possible that the shock may be lethal for certain individuals, e.g., those with heart conditions or using pacemakers. According to Taser International, the manufacturer of the Taser, the gun is safe.
However, safety studies were conducted by a company-paid re- searcher, not an independent testing lab. Furthermore, the tests were conducted on only one pig in 1996 and five dogs in 1999.
Independent studies conducted in England, however, have not been able to support the claim that the weapon is safe.
Conclusion
The above examples reflect only the tip of the iceberg and demonstrate that the factor that has arguably produced the greatest most widespread management failure ever has been the presence of conflicts of interest. The problems that might be caused by ignoring conflicts of interest are not necessarily small.
Marsh & McLennan lost $11.5 billion of its market capitaliza- tion in just a few days after Eliot Spitzer announced his investi- gation (Vickers, 2004). Even if a firm is not under investigation for fraud, it cannot run efficiently if there are serious conflicts of interest present. Corporate America pays a heavy price for rigged markets. Think of all the additional costs that are the result of corruption in the insurance industry. Many firms can- not afford the high cost of health insurance. These additional expenses make corporate America less competitive in the world economy.
Where are the valuable lessons to be learned regarding the effects of conflicts of interest? Not in our business schools. In what might be the most egregious omission, management text- books either have nothing to say about conflicts of interest or no more than a paragraph.
Conflicts of interest are more than an ethical issue: They are quite possibly the major obstacle confronting effective manage- ment today. The first task of a firm that is interested in running efficiently is eliminating or reducing the presence of conflicts of interest.
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Vickers, Marcia. (2004). “The Secret World of Marsh Mac.” Business Week. November 1, pp. 78-89.
Winter, Greg (2004). “Wooing of Guidance Counselors is Raising Profiles and Eyebrows.” New York Times. July 8, pp. A1, A18.
Robert I. Bell
Ph.D.
Economics Department
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York 2900 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11210 PH. (718) 951-5317 E-mail: ribell@voila.fr
Dr. Bell received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964, and a Ph.D. in Cybernetics from Brunel University, England, in 1972. He is Professor of Manage- ment and Chairman of the Economics Department, Brooklyn College. Bell is the author of seven books, most recently: Beurs- bedrog (The Stock Market Sting), De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam, 2003; Les peches capitaux de la haute technologie (The Capital Sins of High Technology), Seuil, Paris, 1998. Impure Science, Wiley, New York 1992.
Hershey H. Friedman
Ph.D.
Economics Department
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York 2900 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11210 PH. (718) 951-5119 E-mail: x.friedman@att.net
Dr. Friedman received a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Brooklyn College in 1968. He earned a masters degree in Eco- nomics from Brooklyn College in 1971, an MBA in Marketing from Bernard M. Baruch College in 1975, and a Ph.D. in Business from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1977. Currently, he serves as a Professor of Business and Market- ing at Brooklyn College.
Linda Weiser Friedman
Ph.D.
Department of Statistics and Computer Information Systems Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York
17 Lexington Avenue – Box B11-220 New York, New York 10010
PH. (646) 312-3361
E-mail: Linda_Friedman@baruch.cuny.edu
Dr. Friedman received a bachelor’s degree in Biology/Statistics from Baruch College in 1976. She earned an M.S. degree in Applied Statistics in 1980 and a Ph.D. in Operations Research in 1983 from Polytechnic Institute of New York. She is Professor of Computer Information systems at Baruch College and is on the doctoral faculty in Business and Computer Science at the Gradu- ate Center of CUNY. Currently, she is the Coordinator of the Information Systems specialization of the CUNY PhD in Business Program.
The Utility of Offshoring:
A Rawlsian Critique
By: Julian Friedland
FRIEDLANDJ@GMAIL.COM
Abstract
Most prominent arguments favor- ing the widespread discretionary business practice of sending jobs overseas, known as ‘offshoring,’
attempt to justify the trend by ap- peal to utilitarian principles. It is argued that when business can be performed more cost-effectively off- shore, doing so tends, over the long- term, to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. This claim is supported by evidence that export- ing jobs actively promotes economic development overseas while simul- taneously increasing the revenue of the exporting country. After show- ing that offshoring might indeed be justified on utilitarian grounds, I argue that according to Rawlsian social-contract theory, the practice is nevertheless irrational and unjust.
For it unfairly expects the people of a given society to accept job-gain benefits to peoples of other societies as outweighing job-loss hardships it imposes on itself. Finally, I conclude that contrary to socialism, which relies much more on government control, capitalism constitutes a social contract that places a par- ticularly strong moral obligation on corporations themselves to refrain from offshoring.
Those most in favor of offshoring tend to argue that the practice is economically advantageous to everyone over the long- term. Thomas Friedman argues that this insight should compel every nation to adopt a set of policies promoting interna- tional trade by freeing up the private sec- tor and removing restrictions to foreign investment. On this view, the long-term economic returns of free trade demand that governments reduce their regulatory control over their respective economies, thus mutually consenting to don what he calls a ‘Golden Straitjacket’.1 While Friedman supports this free market so- lution in which, as he puts it, ‘no one is in charge,’2 the utilitarian ethicist Peter Singer advocates a more democratic so- lution requiring the expansion of global governmental regulatory bodies neces- sary to ensure the equal consideration of interests.3 Implicit in both of these positions is the normative assumption that no government should prioritize its own citizens’ interests in job security over those of the citizens of any other nation.
To accept this turns out, on their view, to create the policies that best satisfy the in- terests of all, thereby achieving the great- est good for the greatest number.
Rawls however provides good reason to consider such an attitude irrational and unjust. Although to my knowledge he never addresses offshoring specifi- cally, it seems a paradigmatic example of why he condemns utilitarianism in general for risking marginalizing the in- terests of the least advantaged members of society in favor of the best total bal- ance of pleasure over pain.4 For in Rawl- sian terms, offshoring conducted merely as a discretionary practice unnecessary to sustain commercial success, exces- sively increases the expectations of some, namely the stockholders, at the expense of stakeholders facing the prospect of job loss.5 Furthermore, with respect to the added benefits offshoring offers job-seek- ers abroad, Rawls unambiguously states in The Law of Peoples that no people is prepared to count the benefits for anoth- er people as outweighing the hardships imposed on itself. 6
In what follows, I first attempt to show that discretionary offshoring may indeed be justified on utilitarian grounds.
I then argue on Rawlsian grounds that the practice is nevertheless unjust. Final- ly I conclude, somewhat ironically, that contrary to socialism, which relies much more on government control, capitalism constitutes a social contract that places a particularly strong moral obligation on corporations themselves to refrain from offshoring.
The Goal of Greatest Global Growth
Proponents of offshoring tend to de- fend it on the grounds that it is the sur- est and fastest way to increase the GDP (Global Domestic Product) of every na- tion worldwide. In other words, it maxi- mizes global average and median GDP. It is therefore generally said to be a ‘win-win game.’ 7 Such assessments of course over- look the possibility of facilitating human rights and environmental abuses as a re- sult of outsourcing to on-site facilities in lesser-developed countries with little or no regulatory oversight. Furthermore, in the absence of social safety nets for sta- bilizing the boom and bust patterns of the free market, offshoring might come at too great a human cost. But such situ- ational contingencies notwithstanding, if offshoring can generally be shown to maximize global economic value, it can be justified on purely economic utilitar- ian grounds. For although offshoring obviously creates immediate job-winners at the expense of immediate job-losers, so long as it tends to increase global av- erage and median economic value over the long term, it continually stimulates job growth. And since, according to utili- tarianism, everyone’s interests should be taken into consideration equally, being American grants no greater moral claim to gainful employment than does being Indian, Malaysian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, or Bengali. For as Singer fa- mously puts it:
It makes no moral difference whether the person I help is a neighbor’s child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away.8
So if I were to decide for example, as upper level manager of my local commu- nity hospital, to fire my neighbor, a father
and radiologist whose job can now be outsourced electronically to India9, it would seem there is no moral difference between doing so at his expense and not doing so at the expense of an unemployed Indian radiologist whose name I may never know, ten thousand miles away. And since offshoring the job costs a lot less than keeping it local, as a utilitarian I may very well see the ends as justifying the means, especially if it can be shown that by extension, doing so also increases the value of both the U.S.
and Indian economies, thereby creating more jobs at home and abroad.
At this point, let us turn to specific data on how offshoring has affected economic growth and job creation internationally over the last few years. The McKinsey Global Institute, research arm of McKinsey & Co. Management Consulting, recently published a revealing analysis on the economic benefits of off- shoring. First of all, according to MGI, offshoring reduces labor costs dramatically. For example, the equivalent of a software de- veloper who costs $60 an hour in the U.S. costs only $6 an hour in India. Similarly, a data entry agent who costs $20 an hour in the U.S. costs only $2 an hour in India. Furthermore, less desir- able jobs in the U.S. are often seen as more desirable in lesser- developed countries. As a result, foreign workers are often more motivated and thus outperform their U.S. counterparts. In ad- dition, companies are using a portion of the added savings as an opportunity to drive revenue growth. For example, by leverag- ing cheap labor, airlines are now more able to chase delinquent accounts receivables. Similarly, computer manufacturers are in- creasing market penetration by offering more services. As a re- sult, by offshoring, many companies are creating far more value from increased revenues than from reduced costs.
U.S. businesses dominate the global share of offshoring, ac- counting for some 70 percent of the total market. Europe and Japan dominate the remainder, with the U.K. as a dominant player. Both the U.S. and the U.K. have liberal employment and labor laws, facilitating offshoring (MGI). There is potential to offshore a very wide variety of functions. The principal crite- ria for successful offshoring are that the functions can either be digitized or handled by telephone, and that appropriate skills are available or easily developed at the offshoring center. The first jobs to be offshored are lower value jobs such as call centers, back-end processing and accounting. But higher value work has since been added to the list. Examples include software mainte- nance and development, aerospace component design and phar- maceuticals research. As the chart below indicates, the range of jobs offshored successfully is substantial and widening continu- ally (MGI).
As it stands, jobs are mostly offshored to countries where English is either the main business language or where there are large English-speaking populations. Thus Canada, India, Ire- land, Israel, Australia, South Africa, and the Philippines have all proved particularly attractive. Offshoring is expected to grow at the rate of 30 to 40 percent a year over the next 5 years. Forrest- er, a leading analyst, projects that the number of U.S. jobs off- shored will grow some $136 billion in wages. Of this total, For- rester expects 473,000 jobs from the IT industry to go offshore over the next twelve years, representing 8 percent of all current IT jobs in the country, or 200,000 jobs a year (MGI). The chart below indicates primary offshored destinations worldwide, in- cluding the market share of the main job importing countries since 2001.
Given that the rate is likely to increase 30 to 40 percent over the next five years, we can adjust these numbers accordingly to obtain a more accurate estimate of the situation today in 2005.
For example, assuming a conservative 35 percent growth rate, India, which carried 7.7 percent of the market in 2001, is likely to be carrying closer to 22 percent today.
As it stands, over the last two decades, in the wake of the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the U.S.
has already shifted away from manufacturing toward what is now mostly a service economy. That is to say, 70 percent of the economy is now composed of services such as retail, restaurants, hotels, personal care services, construction, education and the like. These services are necessarily produced and/or consumed locally and therefore cannot be offshored (MGI). But offshor- ing most of the remaining 30 percent of the economy, would substantially increase the value of the U.S. economy as well as that of the importing country. The data suggests that $1.45 to
$1.47 worth of value is created globally from offshoring every
$1.00 of U.S. labor costs. Of that total, the U.S. recaptures
$1.12 to $1.14, while the receiving country captures, on average, 33 cents (MGI).
But completely converting to a service economy means not only a narrower array of career choices for Americans residing in the U.S., but also that many of the most desirable jobs will be among those no longer available. As chart, 1. above indicates this includes highly skilled and highly paid ‘white-collar’ jobs in the IT industry. Forrester now expects 3.3 million U.S. jobs will be exported by 2015, including software design10. In fact, Forrester also reports that 85 Indian software companies have already received a level 5 Compatibility Maturation Model Rat-
ing (CMM) which is the highest rating. By comparison, only 42 other organizations worldwide have achieved that rating11. Increasingly, as highly skilled workers become available in less- er-developed countries, most anything that can be physically accomplished at a distance, can be profitably offshored. This includes researchers, designers, data analysts, administrators, accountants, consultants, publishers, writers, and various man- agement positions overseeing offshored functions.
Those who support offshoring might point out that the practice only represents a relatively small percentage of job-loss when compared to the total yearly turnover. But one must re- member that offshored losses are likely permanent. As competi- tion for white-collar jobs grows abroad, the bulk of jobs remain- ing in the U.S. will increasingly be limited to those requiring face-to-face interaction. Even this currently modest rate of loss markedly limits the future career prospects of today's U.S. high- schoolers and substantially increases their anxiety about finding a career with any future.
Unfortunately, a hard look at the facts reveals that the wealth created from offshoring does not entirely offset the hardships it creates for many of those affected. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 1979-99, 31 percent of jobs displaced by trade were not fully reemployed. While some workers were able to find higher-paying jobs, most did not. The statistics re- veal that 36 percent of displaced workers soon found jobs that matched or increased their wages, but 55 percent reached no more than 85 percent of their former wages. And as many as 25 percent saw pay cuts of 30 percent or more (MGI). A par- tial solution commonly offered to this problem is a government or business-funded insurance program that would cover wage loss for reemployed full-timers and cover 70 percent of wage loss and full medical benefits during unemployment for up to 2 years. It is estimated that such an insurance scheme would cost no more than 4 to 5 percent of savings12. Still, this would not necessarily fully compensate offshored workers since they may never succeed in obtaining equally rewarding work at equivalent pay. In addition, there are the intrinsic hardships of forced ca- reer change to take into account, such as insecurity, time, effort, and costs associated with choosing a new career and obtaining the requisite level of employment, which for the white-collar sectors are substantial. Imagine the difficulty of, say, a middle- aged parent going back to college for another graduate degree while living on a diminished income, then searching for a job two years later, still having to pay-off the college loan. These are real stresses, indeed struggles, to be incurred broadly across the middle class. But offshoring advocates such as Diana Farrell, President of MGI, sternly reply that globalization demands that we embrace lives of constant retraining. “We live in an economy of not only change,'' she says, "but of ever-more rapid change, and the expectation that you can hold one job for 20 years is not a realistic expectation."13 One cannot help but wonder if she will feel the same when her own consulting job is outsourced to an economist in India. Even if she herself is able to retire comfort- ably at that point, the market result may seem like a raw deal to newly minted American BAs in economics, unless of course they’re open to making the transition—to India.
This is certainly a very demanding, indeed even altruistic, economic ideology. But looking back over all the data provided, there seems to be precious little to reproach it on purely utilitar- ian grounds. Summing up, offshoring increases global economic value, thus creating jobs for those who need them. Although most of the job creation is abroad and comes at the expense of domestic job losses, new domestic jobs in non-offshorable serv- ice sectors will eventually be created to compensate for those
losses. Furthermore, according to utilitarianism, all interests should be considered equally. So assuming sweetened sever- ance packages including extended unemployment and health insurance is granted to offshored American workers, offshoring would indeed seem to achieve the greatest good for the great- est number. Utilitarianism demands that we be completely im- partial to the best total balance of pleasure over pain. So if the total measure of happiness in the world can be increased by cer- tain people sacrificing some of their own happiness, the result is entirely acceptable. Since the sacrifice in this case is rather significant, offshoring is not a moral duty. But it would seem nevertheless to maximize utility given the general circumstances above-mentioned.
The Goal of Genuine Impartiality
Rawls insightfully demonstrates, in A Theory of Justice, that utilitarianism “mistakes impersonality for impartiality”14. What he means by this is that instead of defining impartiality, as utili- tarians do, from the perspective of a sympathetic observer of everyone’s interests, one should define it from the perspective of the persons themselves with their own individual preferences, in an original position of equality. Only then can genuine imparti- ality be achieved by guaranteeing that no individual will have to bear a greater sacrifice than absolutely necessary for the estab- lishment of a just society. Thus, according to Rawls, utilitarian- ism impersonally overlooks and subordinates individual prefer- ences in favor of the greatest total balance of pleasure over pain.
According to Rawls, this mistake happens because of the utili- tarian assumption that the only way everyone’s moral judgments can be brought into agreement is through our natural capacity for sympathy. As he puts it “the approvals of the impartial sym- pathetic spectator are adopted as the standard of justice, and this results in impersonality, in the conflation of all desires into one system of desire”15. This conflation, he argues, is irrational and unfair, for it would never be freely agreed to by anyone from a genuinely impartial standpoint of self interest, that is, before knowing what specific socioeconomic position one may actually end up in.
If we apply this standard of impartiality to the case of off- shoring, we immediately arrive at some interesting results. Im- agine being in the Rawlsian ‘original position’ of determining the norms of a just society, i.e. its social contract, not knowing what particular socioeconomic status one’s fortune will bring. From this standpoint, everyone would make sure to set up a society in which no one would be more disadvantaged than absolutely necessary to insure equal opportunity. Inequalities would thus be allowed so long as they worked to the greatest interest of the least advantaged, by for example, instituting differentials on the basis of merit. Now, imagining oneself in this position, Rawls would ask if anyone would welcome being born at random into a society such as ours in which the dramatic aforementioned off- shoring trends occurred? In other words, would a rational self- interested person prefer to randomly enter at birth into a society identical in every way to ours, but one in which such trends did not occur? If we think seriously about the economic hardships, the instability and the insecurities incurred broadly across the middle class from lives of constant retraining, I think it’s quite clear such a prospect would be rather unappealing. Indeed, it becomes apparent that the utilitarian goal of greatest global growth disproportionately benefits a smaller number of upper- class stockholders at the expense of a much larger number of working-class stakeholders facing the prospect of job-loss. And
as for poor families that will benefit from lower priced goods, they would clearly trade that in for a more secure professional future, especially since it is mostly their less desirable jobs which are ripe for offshoring.
A utilitarian is likely to reply at this point that this thought experiment conveniently excludes consideration of those work- ers abroad who stand to benefit from offshoring. If we imagined the possibility of being born into the current global situation in which more jobs are created overall, we may in fact agree that this benefit is worth the social costs of constant retraining, even if they are ultimately incurred worldwide. In other words, a person facing the prospect of being born randomly into an un- derdeveloped job-importing country such as India may accept the costs of living a life of constant retraining as outweighed by a higher chance of escaping poverty. This is where the so- cial contract theorist (or contractarian) parts company with the utilitarian. A contractarian considers it entirely irrational not to root rights and obligations in a collective social contract by, for, and of, a community of litigants. For it is only in the inter- est of collective agreements and enterprises that any institution is founded. Thus, the institutions created in the interests of a given nation are entirely beholden to the citizens of that na- tion. Accordingly, individuals and organizations within a nation participate according to a legitimizing collective social contract.
Hence we erect public and private institutions entirely on the basis of national interest. The taxes we pay to fund education, infrastructure, private enterprise, etc. are provided exclusively for us—not for any other people. It therefore would seem ab- surd to turn over any and every offshorable job, which may often be quite desirable, over to the citizens of another country which have not participated in the slightest in the establishment of the network of social institutions necessary for the creation of those jobs. Rawls invites us to imagine the following example involv- ing two different societies evolving over time:
The first decides to industrialize and to increase its rate of real saving, while the second does not. Being content with things as they are, and preferring a more pastoral and leisurely society, the second reaffirms its social values. Some decades later the first country is twice as wealthy as the second…should the industrialized country be taxed to give funds to the second? According to the duty of as- sistance (in extreme cases of suffering) there would be no tax, and that seems right; whereas with a global egalitarian principle without target, there would always be a flow of taxes as long as the wealth of one people was less than that of the other. This seems unacceptable
16 (my parentheses).
So similarly, citizens of an industrialized society such as ours should not have to sacrifice good jobs that their own labor and industry produced in the interest of citizens of a more pastoral society such as India’s who chose17 not to industrialize. Indeed the hardships associated with offshoring are likely to be much more burdensome than a graduated income tax to help underde- veloped countries industrialize. Essentially, the U.S. people are under no obligation to increase the availability of good jobs in other societies, and especially not if doing so means offshoring as much as 30 percent of the GDP, much of which is produced by chosen white-collar careers. If this seems to violate strong utilitarian intuitions, it is because those intuitions themselves are misguided. Again, quoting Rawls:
A classical, or average, utilitarian principle would not be ac- cepted by peoples, since no people organized by its government is prepared to count, as first principle, the benefits for another people as outweighing the hardships imposed on itself. Well-ordered peoples insist on an equality among themselves as peoples, and this insist-
ence rules out any form of the principle of utility18.
Thus, on this line of reasoning, the widespread discretionary practice of sending jobs overseas is entirely irrational and unjust.
A Rawlsian contractarianism would therefore recommend that businesses themselves refrain from offshoring unless necessary to maintain commercial success, e.g., if no satisfactory or afford- able workforce is domestically available. And if businesses did not act accordingly on their own, that government regulations should intervene to keep the trend from continuing.
The Capitalist Social Contract
Interestingly, the more socialist-leaning economies of Eu- rope, unified by the Euro (the UK conspicuously excluded) have little or no share of the offshoring market. Naturally, those economies are much more regulated by the hand of government.
One therefore might expect those governments to mutually chose to inhibit the export of jobs to other countries outside the European Union. And indeed, this generally seems to be the case at present. By contrast, the more capitalist-leaning econo- mies of the world such as the U.S., the U.K. and Japan have relatively liberal trade regulations and are thus, not surprisingly, the leading exporters of jobs.
Now, if we agree with Rawlsian contractarianism that dis- cretionary offshoring is unjust, how should the more capital- ist-leaning economies of the world work to minimize the trend?
Obviously, they could erect new regulatory measures such as implementing a tax on offshoring companies proportionate to the value of the labor offshored and revoke the right of those companies to count the costs of offshoring as a non-taxable business expense. But given the amount of value still to be gained from offshoring even under those conditions, it is doubt- ful the trend would subside. In any case, capitalism constitutes a social contract in which the major portion of the economy is in private hands. Thus, contrary to socialism, in which the gov- ernment retains a significant degree of ownership of economic value, capitalism leaves ownership and hence distribution much more in the hands of the private sector. As a result, business has a much greater degree of responsibility to voluntarily uphold its obligations to the collective social contract justice requires. For if it does not meet this responsibility it risks inviting govern- mental regulatory controls that will diminish its autonomy and profitability.
Capitalism operates on the fundamental belief that business does not function in a vacuum. That is to say, what’s in the in- terest of business is ultimately in the interest of the people. But this basic tenet must also be understood in reverse: What’s in the interest of the people is also ultimately in the interest of business. Hence, it is a particularly demanding social contract that implies a high degree of trust. And so when that trust is broken on a grand scale, in the corporate accounting scandals or late or in the current offshoring race, it compromises the peo- ple’s faith in capitalism itself. Therefore, the continuing legiti- macy of the U.S. economic system rests to a great extent on its business leaders taking business ethics seriously, indeed perhaps more seriously than their European counterparts. This means getting in the habit of reconsidering policies such as offshor- ing that tend to contrast, more than reconcile, private interest and public good. At this particular point in time, it means being prepared to challenge prevailing assumptions at the heart of a corporate culture.
1 Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Anchor Books, New York, 2000, pp. 104-106.
2 Ibid, p. 112.
3 Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization, Yale, 2002, pp. 106-149.
4 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard, 1971, pp. 437- 8.
5 Ibid, pp. 67-8.
6 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples, Harvard, 1999, p. 40.
7 McKinsey Global Institute, “Offshoring: Is it a Win-Win Game?” McKinsey & Co., San Francisco, 2003.
8 Peter Singer, Ibid, p. 157, and “Famine, Affluence and Mo- rality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, I:2, 1972, pp. 231-32.
9 Hospitals and health-maintenance organizations are al- ready doing so, according to Jared Bernstein, Senior Economist at the Economic Policy Institute. See Steven Greenhouse, “Re- training for What?: If You’re a Waiter, the Future is Rosy,” New York Times, Week in Review, March 7, 2004.
10 Steven Greenhouse, “IBM Explores Shift of White-Collar Jobs Over Seas,” New York Times, July 2, 2003.
11 www.forrester.com
12 MGI and Kletzer and Litan, “A Prescription to Relieve Worker Anxiety,” Policy Brief 01-2. IIE, February 2001.
13 Steven Greenhouse, Op.cit.
14 Op. 166.
15 Pp. 163-4
16 Rawls, Ibid, p. 117.
17 It could be argued that countries such as India or Chi- na, which have been subject to repressive rule, did not in fact
“choose” not to industrialize and are thus not responsible for their lesser prosperity. Although this may well be, Rawls does not consider this plight as a burden sufficient to constitute an obligation to assist by citizens of other more prosperous coun- tries. Rawls does however claim that “well-ordered peoples have a duty to assist burdened societies” that “lack the political and cultural traditions, the human capital and know-how, and, of- ten, the material and technical resources needed to be well-or- dered” (Ibid, p. 106). Thus, in extreme cases of suffering such as genocide or mass-starvation, there is indeed a n obligation to assist. But with respect to countries, such as India or China, that clearly possess the political and cultural traditions and the human, material and technical resources needed to be well-or- dered, the peoples of more prosperous countries have no duty to assist. Indeed, if placed in the original position, it would seem inappropriate for anyone to will to be taxed or “outsourced” in favor of the citizens of an already well-ordered society not un- dergoing extreme cases of suffering beyond that country’s own capacity to assist.
18 Rawls, Ibid, p. 40.
Julian Friedland
405 E Oak St.
Lafayette, CO 80026 USA
303 665-5807 friedlandj@gmail.com
Julian Friedland has a Ph.D. from the University of Paris 1, Pantheon Sorbonne and has taught business ethics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and St. Cloud State University in Minnesota where he recently completed a visiting prof. contract.
